Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with egg whites, sugar, lemon juice, and milk, served with a custard topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add boiling water to the soaked gelatine.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Make the snow

  1. In a bowl, combine the cooled gelatine with egg whites, sugar, and lemon juice.

  2. Beat the mixture well for at least 30 minutes.

Set, make the custard and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Set the mold aside to cool.

  3. For the custard, cook the egg yolks with milk and sugar to taste until thickened.

  4. Serve the jelly with the custard floating on top.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Forms the set structure of the jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped by beating, they trap air to create the light, foamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the snow and the custard.
Milk
Provides the liquid and richness for the custard, which thickens when cooked.

The step that matters

Cool the gelatine before combining and beating. Gelatine sets as it cools, so if it is still warm or already firm it cannot be whipped into the egg whites properly. Letting it cool to a syrupy state lets it fold in smoothly and set around the air bubbles.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More snow pudding recipes

Egg 5Sauce 3 See all 260 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes